“If you say so.” Fogelman clucked. “Just remember who told you first. You got maybe five more years in the flying game before they put you out to pasture — and that’s if they will still allow women in combat past the five-year evaluation period that ends in ’98. You might make it to light colonel and might even make ops officer, but get in your Air War College and squadron commander in five years? I don’t think so. All the good slots go to active-duty ass-kissers. And you need to get a command position in a tactical unit before they’ll make you a full bird. I hate to say it, but you got screwed when you accepted a Reserve commission. You’d be better off if you just concentrated on getting Liberty Air to go regional, rather than blowing half your time flying these fucking planes. Doesn’t that make sense?”
Before she could answer, activity on the primary radio halted their conversation, and he had his head back in the radarscope again. But she had to give Fogelman a bit of credit — he was smarter than he ever let on. If she was given the choice of building her military career or building Liberty Air into a regional carrier, which should she choose?
Liberty Air, of course. There was no other choice, really. She was already stretching herself to the limit by pulling fourteen days of Reserve duty a month — what would she do when it was time to make the big push for squadron commander? Spend an extra week, without pay, working on base? Go full-time to Air War College in residence — for six months? That would kill Liberty Air Service for sure. Even Ed Caldwell, who was the closest thing to a steady guy she’d had in years, wanted her to make a choice and settle down with him.
Sure, there was something to be said for being one of the few top women combat soldiers in the country, even a dash of celebrity. And nothing beat flying the RF-111G Vampire bomber. It was an aviator’s wet-dream. But as irritating and aggravating as Fogelman could be, his points were ones she had tried to push out of her mind in the past. But she knew he was calling a spade a spade. She had put in time with the military, a lot of time, and Liberty Air offered her the chance to finally build a life for herself. Some security. Some recognition and respect outside of the military. But it couldn’t be done if she was going to try and climb the military Reserves ladder as well. She tried to toss the thought out of her head … for now. But soon, very soon, Rebecca knew she was going to have to seriously weigh the direction she wanted her life to take … and her commitment to the Reserves.
It took about an hour to reach the specified coordinates, and another hour to reach Johnson and Norton and have them join up on them in the overwater restricted area. On the way to the destination, they got the latest weather advisories from Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center. Their nearest alternate airfield, Brunswick Naval Air Station in Maine, was getting light snow showers, and Plattsburgh itself might be snowed in too in about four hours. Their last suitable alternate base, Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire, would probably go down in about six hours.
By the time they reached point FREEZ, they were out of radio range of both military and civilian stations. Just to make matters worse, everyone’s AFSATCOM satellite communications units in the four-ship cell did not seem to be working — the units were functioning and messages seemed to be going out to the satellite, but no messages were coming in. That meant no coordination for a landing site and aerial refueling. When they tried the high-frequency (HF) radio, they heard absolutely nothing but static. “Anything in the weather briefings about sunspot activity?” Furness asked Fogelman.
“Huh?”
“Sunspots,” Rebecca said. “They wipe out HF messages by electrifying the ionosphere so radio waves can’t bounce off.”
“I didn’t hear anything briefed to us about sunspots,” Fogelman said. She wondered if he ever listened to weather briefings. Furness sent the rest of the flight out to loose-route formation, set best-endurance airspeed to conserve fuel, and set up a monitoring system on the UHF, AFSATCOM, and HF radios for any instructions from anybody.
Right away, she was feeling more and more uncomfortable with this setup. Problem number one was the weather. After just a few minutes, Furness found she had to bring the other flight members closer and closer in, nearly right back into fingertip formation, so they could stay in visual contact with one another. This immediately began taxing Paula Norton’s flying skills — she was a pretty good stick, but long minutes in fingertip formation tended to make her a bit erratic. Rebecca had kept her in her original position in the number-three position, but as the wingmen drew in closer and the weather got worse, the planes at the farther ends tended to shift more, amplifying the other planes’ movements, so she put Norton in the number-two position, right on Furness’ wing. If they had to go “lost wingman” in the clouds, Rebecca wanted Paula to stay with her as long as possible.
Rebecca made the decision to start heading back toward Plattsburgh after nearly an hour orbiting in the warning area. Johnson and Norton had already been down on the low-level navigation route — Johnson had dropped his “beer can” bombs, while Norton still had her GBU-24 laser-guided bomb — and they were getting close to their fuel reserves. It would take nearly thirty minutes for a tanker from Pease or Plattsburgh to get out to them in the warning area for a refueling, and that was too close a call — if a plane couldn’t take on gas, they’d have an immediate fuel emergency. She was going to get an IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) clearance from Boston Center and head back to Plattsburgh before the weather totally crumpled. Exercise or not, things were getting a little too disorganized and dangerous, and it was time to get on the ground and regroup.
Just as they headed inbound from point FREEZ and were about to contact Boston Center for their clearance, they heard: “Unknown rider, unknown rider, off the Kennebunk VOR zero-five-zero-degree radial, niner-five nautical miles, this is WINDJAMMER on GUARD, authenticate kilo-bravo and stand by.” The message was repeated several times. They knew exactly who WINDJAMMER was: that was the collective call-sign for the northeast sector of the Air Force Air Defense Zone. The radar controllers that continually scanned the skies for intruding aircraft had locked on to them.
Furness quickly used her left MFD and set the backup radio to GUARD, the international emergency frequency, and said, “Mark, look up that authentication.”
“I’m going, I’m going,” Fogelman said, quickly flipping back to the proper date-time-group page. Air Defense required unknown aircraft to respond immediately or they would scramble fighters — some of those fighters coming from their own sister squadron, the 134th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Burlington. Once they discovered you were a friendly, the shit would hit the fan from headquarters on down. No one wanted to be caught busting the Air Defense Identification Zone. “Reply Zulu,” Fogelman finally said.
“WINDJAMMER, this is Thunder Zero-One flight of four, authenticates Zulu,” Furness radioed on the backup radio. On the primary radio, she said, “Thunder Flight, fingertip formation, monitor GUARD on backup. Zero-Two, try to contact Boston Center on the primary radio and get us a clearance back to Plattsburgh.”
“Two, wilco.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“Thunder Zero-One, this is WINDJAMMER,” the air defense controller came back. “Check your IFF for all proper codes, recycle your beacons, and stand by for authentication. Acknowledge.”
Furness and Fogelman looked at each other, puzzled. Fogelman hit the CFI, or Channel Frequency Indicator, button on his control and display unit, which gave him a readout of all the beacons and transceivers on the plane. “I got mode one on and set, although I don’t know what for,” he said, reading off the currently activated radios and their frequencies. “Mode three is squawking 1200, and altitude readout Mode C is on. Mode two and four are standby.” Mode two and mode four were special identification codes required for tactical aircraft in a battlefield situation. They were never used in peacetime and could be set only on the ground, usually by the crew chiefs before every flight if required. Mode one was a military-unit-identification beacon interrogated only by allied nations and naval vessels; modes three and C were standard civil-air-traffic-control beacons used to transmit flight data and altitude.